


Falling in Love All Over Again

by nelliespector (ilmv)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Dead People, F/M, Fluff, Guilt, Heaven, Jenga, Mentions of Sex, Soulmates, heaven is boring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilmv/pseuds/nelliespector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy woke up every morning in his heaven certain he would be alone forever, until the moment Amelia walked through the front door. His soulmate was unexpected. Jimmy was surprised, and the fact that he was surprised saddened him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling in Love All Over Again

Amelia concentrates on her next move, carefully pushing a jenga tile from the center of the tower. It's another mid-afternoon in their heaven, the one she and Jimmy share. They have their house and their yard, and a few other places from their shared memories they can visit: The park where they used to walk, the restaurant where Jimmy proposed, the old cabin where they had their honeymoon because it was all they could afford. Most of the time they prefer to stay at home, where they were alone. Technically, they were always alone, but in those other places they sometimes met memory-generated people, decoys who filled out the scenes to give them life, but couldn't interact with them. There was something unsettling about it, a reminder that this was all a fabrication. Jimmy was well acquainted with heaven and its limitations. He knew, thanks to an odd visitor named Ash who had 'hacked' heaven and had come to check on him a few years back, that certain people share their heaven with a soulmate. Most people had no one but themselves. Jimmy woke up every morning in his heaven certain he would be alone forever, until the moment Amelia walked through the front door. His soulmate was unexpected. Jimmy was surprised, and the fact that he was surprised saddened him.

"Remember when you thought I was crazy?" Jimmy asks, sipping his sweet tea.

"You sounded crazy. Anyone would have thought the same," Amelia replies, the jenga tile dropping to the table, leaving the tower undisturbed. "Especially after you boiled your arm."

This is how they passed their eternity. They had a closet full of board games, and all the time in the world. Jimmy thought about time a lot. He wished he had spent more time with his family when he was alive. He wished he hadn't wasted time dwelling on God, heaven, angels and instead turned to the blessings around him- his wife and daughter and the nice, simple, safe life he had built for them. He wished he hadn't rushed off to work, worried about being on time, or spent so much time on the road away from Amelia, putting a strain on their relationship. He thought about how much time he had been waiting here all alone, thinking an empty house was the great reward for his sacrifice. It couldn't have been more than a few years on earth, but in heaven it felt like an eternity. He had spent decades thinking about his mistakes, about how he could have done everything differently. If he had said no to Castiel, the angel could have found another vessel and ruined someone else's life. If he had, where would he be on earth? Would Amelia be with him?

Jimmy takes an easy move, pushing a tile from the top of the tower.

"I don't mean to dwell on things. I know I should be happy," Jimmy says.

"But you're not," Amelia says, more as a statement than a question.

"We're the lucky ones, I get that. We get to be together. I just thought there would be more to it than this," he says, shrugging.

Heaven was supposed to be perfect. Jimmy wondered where the bliss was. What right did he have to complain? Even this he wasn't worthy of. He wondered why the angels hadn't wiped certain things from his memory to make him happy. He prayed to Castiel every day to come and take those memories away. Castiel never shows up and Jimmy doesn't know why. He didn't want to remember anything about being a vessel. He didn't want to remember his body being stretched by a huge pillar of light stuffed inside him. He didn't want to remember threatening words falling from his lips with a deep, unfamilar voice, or seeing his hands used to torture and maim and being powerless to stop it. He also didn't want to remember the embarrassment he felt picking up his medication from the pharmacy after he had told a psychiatrist he was hearing an angel talk to him through the radio. He didn't want to remember Amelia being frightened by him. He didn't want to remember sleeping in the living room after Amelia refused to share a bed with him, or her threats to take Claire and leave.

"We can make it better. We can try," Amelia says. She attempts to push a tile from the middle of the tower, her hand less steady than it was a moment ago. The tower comes toppling down around her, and she sighs in frustration.

They tried. In the early days after they had been reunited, everything seemed fine, almost blissful. They fell in love all over again. They made love for the first time in years. They did that many times, until they ran out of rooms in the house. Then they did it in the cabin and in the lake. They became more daring as time went on. They strolled into the park, hand in hand, completely naked and made love on the grass in front of a oblivious onlookers who would just walk by. They felt like Adam and Eve. They explored their shared heaven, a tour of their best memories together. Other than the house and the park, most of their memories were far in the past.

When the honeymoon phase had passed, Jimmy tried to talk to Amelia about what had happened to her after he died. Every time he brought the subject up she closed down. Whatever it was, she didn't want to discuss it. It was either too painful or too embarrassing for her to revisit. He could only guess, and his worse case scenarios were pretty dark. He had guessed that she lost her mind or got hooked on drugs, fell in with bad people. There were scars. There was something else different about her, a haunted look about her eyes. Whatever it was, he wouldn't judge her. How could he? He knew whatever it was, all of it was his fault.

Jimmy knows she is sincere. He knows she loves him, and he loved her. But they weren't the same people they once were. Every time Jimmy looks at Amelia he sees the choice he made and the lives he destroyed. Amelia deserved a long, happy life. They should have grown old together. If not, at the very least, Claire deserved a mother and father.

"I wish they would take it all away from us. Erase everything that happened and let us start over," he says. "That would be heaven to me."

Heaven is designed by angels, and most angels don't understand humanity. They think humans are simple creatures, and in a lot of ways they're right. It's nice having a cozy house that never needs to be cleaned, and a fridge that automatically restocks itself with their favorite foods. But only one angel in a thousand understands what guilt is and how heavy it can weigh on a person's heart. Only one angel in a million understands true unconditional love and how rare it is, how most love tarnishes and fades over time. Whatever angel designed heaven and left Jimmy with all his memories intact wasn't one in a thousand, and whatever angel decided Jimmy and Amelia were soulmates wasn't one in a million.

Amelia stands up from her chair and joins Jimmy on the couch. "What's done is done. Our lives are over. It can't be erased. We're here. We can start over now if you want to," she says, threading her fingers through his.

"Let's start by being honest with each other. Tell me what happened to you, please?" Jimmy asks.

Amelia sighs and shakes her head.

"Please, I want to know," Jimmy says, caressing her face. "I've told you everything. I won't be angry, no matter what it is."

Amelia relents. She tells him about searching everywhere for him, moving around from place to place, dragging Claire along. Following leads, seeing his face on the news, knowing it was the angel and not him but unaware he was no longer a prisoner inside that body, that he had been blown to oblivion years before. Claire stayed with relatives for awhile, then Amelia lost track of her when the girl ran away from home. Amelia had become so consumed with her search for Jimmy that she lost contact with her own daughter. Amelia's eyes well up with tears as she remembers that phone call from her mother. Amelia tried everything to get Jimmy back. She visited voodoo priests, witches, psychics, hunters, even summoned a crossroads demon, but nobody could help. She tells him about the grigori and their promise to reuinite her with Jimmy. The next thing she knew she was tied up, being drained of her essence, drugged with the thoughts of being with Jimmy and holding him once again. Tears stream down her face and Jimmy craddles her in his arms. 

"I never gave up. I couldn't. I had to believe you were out there somewhere, that he was still carrying you around inside him," she says, crying, her face pressed against Jimmy's grey t-shirt.

Jimmy kisses the top of her head and strokes her hair. "That son of a bitch," Jimmy says. "He could have looked for you and told you I was dead. Why didn't he? Where was he?"

"It was too late when he showed up. Claire was with him. They saved me, but it was too late," Amelia says. "Claire was so brave. She grew up to be so strong and beautiful."

"Yeah. No thanks to me," Jimmy says, ashamed, pulling away from Amelia's embrace.

"I never blamed you for this, so don't blame yourself. You did what you thought was right," Amelia says. "You did what you thought God wanted you to do. How can I blame you for that? How can I be angry at you for having a faith in God that I could never have? I never blamed you, not once. And I never stopped loving you."

Jimmy smiles slightly. Soulmates weren't about a perfect relationship or an ideal marriage. Soulmates were just two people who never gave up on each other, no matter what. Jimmy had risked his life to go back to his family after Castiel had discarded him as a vessel, he refused to give up on his old life. It was a foolish mistake, but one driven by love and by not wanting to be remembered as the man who walked out of their lives. When he took Castiel back into him and became a vessel again he did it only to save his daughter. It wasn't an act of faith that time, it was an act of love. He was done with God, angels, heaven and all the rest of it. He had saved his daughter, and his daughter in turn had saved Amelia.

"Do you think one day we might see her again? Maybe Ash could-," Jimmy says.

"Hopefully not for a very long time," Amelia smiles. "at least 80 years from now."

Jimmy sighs. "I've spent decades hating myself for what I did, with only the bad memories to keep me company here. I'm sorry if I've been distant. I don't want to be. I just feel like I don't deserve you or any of this," he says.

"We can start over. The slate will never be clean, but we can try our best," she says, taking his hand in her own. "We have this house and we have all those places to remind us of how we fell in love in the first place. And I think that's why we have them, to help us remember who we once were, what our love once was."

"I love you," he says, kissing Amelia's hand, tears in his eyes. "And I want to fall in love with you all over again, if you'll let me."

Amelia pulls Jimmy close, touching her forehead to his. "We only have forever to figure it out," she says.


End file.
